Ikea’s latest furniture collection includes an exploding lamp and an herb garden – The Verge

If you live in a city and are short on cash, you’ll likely furnish your apartment with pieces from Ikea. The Swedish furniture company released a teaser for its upcoming PS 2014 Collection, which is inspired by the constant motion of cities and hints at the growing modular design trend for small spaces.

But this is no ordinary furniture collection: it doesn’t contain any “core” pieces like beds or sofas. Instead, it seems to be an amalgam of quirky accessories designed specifically to be cheap and consume minimal floor space. Other than showing many unrealistically happy individuals lugging large pieces of furniture around on the streets, the video provides only a glimpse into PS 2014; the ladder-like shelving unit with hooks at the top could prove useful in tiny kitchens or hallways, and the narrow bench meant for quick stops to put on or take off your shoes could turn an entryway into a makeshift mudroom. But then there are pieces — like a lamp that explodes into a Death Star-esque orb — that don’t seem to serve any practical purpose other than simply being a conversation starter.

An exploding lamp, or an ultra-narrow bench?

In the teaser’s details, PS collection project manager Peter Klinkert emphasizes the importance of functionality and good design in places where people have little to spend and little space to spare. “These are multifunctional designer objects that involve us in the design conversation,” Klinkert says, “depending on where we place them and how we use them.” However, it’s questionable how functional something like the large, indoor herb garden can be if you don’t even have enough floor space to hold it. We’ll have to wait until sometime in April, possibly at the Salone del Mobile 2014 furniture fair in Milan, to see if the rest of the collection is as odd and freckled with unexpected functions as these few objects are.